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By Edward Graham Sebbie
ActionAid Ghana has commenced major stakeholders’ engagement towards the commencement of the mangroves restoration project for coastal resilience.
Community durburs were held with the three beneficiary communities in the Ada West District of the Greater Accra Region namely Goi, Akplabanya and Wekumagbe, to solicit their inputs for informed strategies towards the project’s take off.
Present at the engagements were representatives from the Habitat For Humanity International under the UN-Habitat, Environmental Protection Authority, National Disaster Management Organisation, Forestry Commission and the Ada West District Assembly.
Through the engagements, the project which contains four technical areas including Early Warning System, Civil Works, Mangroves and Livelihoods, brought more clarity to the scope of the project which hitherto was only known to the beneficiaries as mangroves planting.
With explanations by the various experts onboard, the project also involves construction of drainage systems and water retention facilities to prevent the perennial flooding, installation of early warning system machines to enable community folk to detect pending disasters and avert them, restoration of the depleted mangroves as a means of providing nature-based approach to solving the sea erosion menace and alternative sources of livelihood for sustainable living.
To ensure the thrive and success of the project, a nine-member committee comprising traditional leaders, youth groups, women, specially abled persons and assembly memebers as well as unit committee members is being formed in each of the beneficiary communities to monitor it at the community level.
The project comes as a huge relief for the communities given the growing destructive activities of the Atlantic ocean on them. While Akplabanya is almost in the belly of the ocean, Goi which used to be at least a kilometre from the beach is now just a couple of metres away.
The three beneficiary communities were grateful to ActionAid for seeing the need to bring the project to their communities. The ActionAid team therefore tasked the communities to own the project by making the relevant inputs to make it a success.
The coastal mangrove replenishment is a huge project ActionAid is undertaking in eleven districts in Ghana and ten districts in neighbouring La Cote D’Ivoire with the prime aim of adopting nature-based means to help reduce the negative impacts of the Atlantic Ocean on coastal communitues, bearing in mind the integrity of coastal biodiversity.
Hundreds of community members will have the opportunity to partake in the project which is already being piloted at Wokumagbe.
